“Brule knows he’s a nut, and most of Check It Out’s finest moments are when he looks back on the mess he’s made with an air of self-depreciation. Brule is his worst and only critic and therefore a very sincere individual in his way.” — Dean Essner
Last night at 12:30 a.m., while most of the sane world slept or drifted off to the safe sounds of David Letterman or Jimmy Kimmel, Steve Brule — the senile, clueless, speech-slurring doctor who can’t pronounce anything correctly — made his return to television on Adult Swim’s brilliant Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule.
The show, created by absurdist comedy mainstays Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, is now in its third season. Adult Swim has always been known for its quirky, left-of-center animated programs, such as Robot Chicken and Squidbillies, but Check It Out! is a whole new brand of weird and it’s exciting that there are no imminent signs of it ending.
On paper, the setup is very unfunny. Brule, played by John C. Reilly, is a self-proclaimed doctor who hosts an 11-minute late-night program of sorts that is pitched somewhere in between a demented infomercial and a cheaply-produced public access segment. Each episode finds Brule exploring some topic of mind-bogging mundaneness: how to make friends, how to get healthy, how to overcome fear.
But the humor lies in how oblivious Brule is to everything and everyone except himself, while the world around him plays it straight. Such is the foundation of well-crafted post-ironic humor: sincerity. In a post-ironic setting, the lines between what’s authentic and inauthentic are blurred beyond reproach. Therefore, Brule seems like a very, very serious man. However, he can’t do anything right.
Take the show’s finest episode, which finds Brule learning about the importance, as well as the nuances, of eating and cooking. He brings us to a restaurant where he orders everything on the menu, giving us insights on what’s in his fridge (ham, turkey, bacon) as well as tips on how to cool down your food (take a swig of milk and then spit it in your plate) along the way. Then he asks the waitress out on a quasi-date back to the Check It Out! studio, only to eventually discover she’s a relative of his. “Sunshine Brule is my cousin,” he sadly laments. “Who cares?”
This sequence sums up the show particularly well for a few reasons. First off, we get Brule’s gung-ho attitude as a reporter — this is hilarious in his own right. But then he realizes he’s messed up in attempting to woo his cousin. In a way, this cunningly reinforces the show’s post-ironic intent. Brule knows he’s a nut, and most of Check It Out’s finest moments are when he looks back on the mess he’s made with an air of self-depreciation. Brule is his worst and only critic and therefore a very sincere individual in his way.
The old adage is the best comedy comes from the darkest places. There’s a terrifying dystopian essence to Check It Out! in the way everyone has no idea how ridiculous they are. It’s all normalized, with Brule at the sloppy center.
He’s not a real doctor or an anchor or even someone who understands the nature of his humor. But who cares. He knows himself.
[ READ MORE: The weird, wonderful world of absurdist comedy ]
